Friday, October 14, 2011

I've had an absence from posting, and I noticed some trends while updating the deals.

2011 Topps Marquee, Minor League Heritage Edition, 2011 Sweet Spot, and 2010 Panini Totally Certified have sustained big drops in price. 2011 Triple Threads has been extremely popular and taken over the $150-200 range in baseball cards. Maybe Topps should have waited to release Triple Threads? Marquee has some weak autographs and boring patches while Triple Threads has a good amount of HOF'ers in both the triple relic hits and the new single jersey hits..

Upper Deck is struggling this year in football even though they eliminated jersey cards from Sweet Spot and pushed out the first video cards in 2011 Upper Deck. The sticker autos don't look that great and the autograph checklists are weak. I opened a box of regular Upper Deck this week since the prices have crashed to around $65 and I think that's a fair price for the product.

The 2011 Football products have been hot, with Platinum and Finest rising in price this month. Prime has stayed around the same price, and it is actually my favorite football product of the year so far. Unfortunately, the photoshop jobs on the rookies and the base set pictures are terrible. I was expecting big things from Prime after last year's amazing base set.

2010 Obak has dropped again down to $44.95 and it's a pretty good buy especially for baseball bloggers.

2008 Razor Letterman, one of the best boxes, is on sale. Lots of the players in this set made big impacts this year in the majors.

711cards.com joins the lineup this week as they are offering the lowest price on Prime. Sensei322 over at bustingpacks.com has spoken well of them, so they should be trustworthy.

Monday, October 10, 2011

Hey everyone, sorry for the lack of posts but I have been busy and have some urgent family stuff going on. I broke these two boxes of 2009-2010 Panini Season Update a couple of weeks ago, but I just got around to posting them.

These boxes once retailed at around $30-40, but they now go for around $60. Advertising 1 autograph and 2 jersey cards per box but providing many more than 3 hits, the boxes rose in value. In my first box, I received 2 dual autographs and 3 jersey cards. In my second box, I received 4 jersey cards, 1 dual autograph, and 1 legend autograph. Most boxes have around this amount of hits.

Each box should provide most of the 200 card base set. The base cards have a clean, nice look, with highlights cards and all star cards.

These are some of the base cards and inserts. Each box also has 1-3 numbered cards that are indistinguishable other than numbering on the back. They are numbered pretty randomly but seem to be somewhere around 1/1 to 1/100.

These jersey cards are the main hits in the product. These Christmas Cards jersey pieces were worn on Christmas day. These cards are numbered to 499 and have prime patch variations numbered to 25. The Rookie Challenge jerseys are not numbered and don't specify if they are from all-star weekend.

Here's another main hit set:

I received one Lakers Legacy jersey card in each box. They are not numbered, but Nick Van Exel and Kobe jersey cards are awesome pulls. If you're a Lakers fan, I recommend these boxes strongly.

Now we get to the cards that set Season Update apart from other mid-range boxes.

I pulled a redemption for a Robert Horry auto /50.

There are around 53 legends and current stars who have redemptions for autographs in this set. They range from the lower-end "stars" like Michael Beasley and Baron Davis to greats like Dominique Wilkins, Chris Mullin, and Kobe. One has a decent chance to pull one of these autos since the current players' are numbered to 100 while the legends have variations numbered to 50 and 25. Also, the other autographs in the set excluding prime auto parallels of the aforementioned insert sets are the rookie duals and triples:

I pulled a redemption for a Jermaine Taylor David Andersen auto /99 and these two dual autos.

These duals are numbered to 99 while the autos with the top rookies (Evans, Curry, Jennings, and Blake Griffin) are numbered to 49. The 2009 draft class is an unbelievable class, where even the cards numbered to 99 still have great players. I pulled probably three of the worst dual autographs in the whole set, yet I still had capable players in Jerekbo and Summers. Players like James Harden, Eric Maynor, DeMar DeRozan, Jrue Holliday, Darren Collison, Omri Casspi, Taj Gibson, Jeff Teague, DeJuan Blair, and Rodrigue Beaubois help make up the lower-level autos. Almost every player in that group has the potential to be an all-star with in the next few years. The triple autographs have cards like the Blake Griffin triple autos (he has three of them) which provide some chances for huge mojo that one rarely sees in mid-end products.

Since this season update brand also utilizes cards that Panini couldn't fit into other sets or needed to update, there are also some oddballs. There are manupatches for five all stars (Kobe, Dirk, Bosh, LeBron, and Wade) and Prestige rookies with auto variations of players who were left out of the original set.

These boxes really epitomize providing something for everyone. The base set is really nice and clean, and it provides something different from the usual sets with the allstar and highlights cards. The inserts also look nice. Each box should get you almost all of the base set. The hits have clean designs, and the Christmas Cards are interesting concepts. Each box contains a good amount of hits and the strong rookie class makes this product suitable for hit-seekers. There is mojo available with the legends autos and the great rookie class that is uncommon for a $60 product. Boxes like Limited and Classics may provide the nice hits or the collectible base set, but 2009-2010 Panini Season Update provides both.

Note: about the 2010 Season Update, the rookie class is much weaker, and almost every box has only one single autograph. It looks like a fun break, but the hits aren't that great.

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About CCC

Thanks for visiting the site! This site is a sports card blog focused on finding low-mid end boxes and packs with the best value and passing on the information to readers in addition to the usual blog posts. Check out the best box breaks tab for the highly recommended products so far. I also will post weekly deals from sports cards dealers around the web and highlight any sales. Check out the deals and contests tabs to see contests in the blogosphere and highlighted deals from various websites! Please follow as I continue to build and update the site and tell me if you think there's any box that's a great value that I should highlight!